To Steal Our Breath Away
by Beeezie
Summary: Banshees, veela, and werewolves have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Auror Johanna Greengrass has been tasked with investigating it, and the rabbit hole runs deeper than anyone could have dreamed.
1. Prologue

It should have been a quiet, relaxing night. She was in the middle of nowhere in the middle of her holiday, which was usually the way she preferred it; Jane Ogden was even counting down the days before she could reasonably retire from her job with the Ministry of Magic and move to the middle of nowhere. In a few minutes, the clock would hit midnight, and she'd be at 1,530.

She didn't have any issues with her job, really - she was just _tired_ of it. In a couple years, she'd start really planning in earnest to leave London. A quiet little cabin on the outskirts of a quiet little village would do her just fine.

Jane had always liked her solitude.

The little house she'd rented for three weeks was set on a hill, which meant that there was virtually always a breeze. It had taken her a few days to get used to it, but after a week and a half, she'd come to find it comforting. She'd been generally eschewing the well-lit deck built into the side of the house in favor of the hammock under the apple tree; one night, she'd even drifted off before going inside and woken up just as dawn was peeking over the trees.

Tonight, though, the darkness felt different. She wasn't sure why, but she was suddenly horribly aware of how _exposed_ she was out here and how easy it would be for someone to sneak up on her. Though the full moon was rapidly approaching, the clouds obscured most of the moonlight that might have otherwise filtered down. The stairs leading up to the house and the deck were illuminated by the faintly glowing orb mounted overhead, but down here, she could barely see her hand in front of her face.

Her first irrational thought was that the moonlight never could do what she wanted it to. It would have been nice if just once, the moon had been out when it actually did her some good.

The orb flickered twice, and her breath caught in her throat.

Jane knew that she was just being stupid. There was no reason that this small little house on a small little island with very few people now that the busy summer season had passed would have anything or anyone on it who wanted to hurt her. There were no natural predators on this island, just deer and birds, and while she wasn't in law enforcement and consequently wasn't really familiar with the way criminals thought, she couldn't see any logical reason for a human predator to want to come here. There just weren't enough people to make it worth their time - most of the houses were empty.

Even so, the uneasiness remained, and after a minute of straining to hear something - _anything_ \- that didn't belong through the pitch black night, she heard a thud just a few steps behind her. She instinctively sprang to her feet and rushed toward the house. Her sensible side only caught up as she was putting her foot on the first step.

Apples had been falling the entire time she'd been here, and that had undoubtedly been an apple. Of _course_ it had been an apple. That's hadn't been enough to so much as give her pause before tonight; she wasn't sure why she was so on edge.

Once she'd ascended the five stairs leading up to the deck, though at a significantly more subdued pace, she forced herself to lean on the railing and look into the darkness. There was nothing out there; she knew that.

There was _nothing_ out there. There couldn't be.

Still, for the first time since she'd arrived, Jane locked the door behind her. The sound of the deadbolt sliding into the solid oak frame soothed her jangling nerves a little, as did the click of the locks as she closed each of the many windows lining both the far wall and the wall directly to the right of the door - for Merlin's sake, did this house have _nothing_ but windows?

Branches from one of the trees nearest the cottage brushed against two of the windows with unusual force, and her heart leapt into her mouth. It took a minute before she could steel herself enough to turn around and look at the offending windows head-on. She was almost surprised not to see someone or some _thing_ pressed up against the glass, as though she were in a melodramatic ghost story.

Granted, she could barely see anything at all, so the absenceit wasn't much reassurance.

She grabbed her wand from the counter on the other end of the big, airy room and rushed around the room, tapping each individual window lock to reinforce it. There was no sense in taking chances.

The thought was discomforting enough on its own. She'd come here to get _away_ from concerns about _taking chances._ She'd grown up in a little village where nobody ever bothered to lock their back door, and probably not their front one, either.

She missed that. It made for a more relaxing life when you weren't suspicious enough of your neighbors that you always locked the door to your flat and when there wasn't intense pressure not to hold the front door for anyone you didn't know.

"Just the full moon." She forced herself to take a deep breath. It was shakier than she would have liked - but then, the full moon always made her jumpy. She cast one more spell, and once she'd gulped down a glass of the chilled potion kept safe behind a closed cabinet door, she went upstairs.

For the first time since she'd arrived, she took her wand with her.

In the bright, cheerful light of the morning, she felt more than a little foolish. It was very difficult to believe that anything sinister was lurking in the shadows; there were birds singing in the trees, and the leaves that littered the ground would surely have crunched if anyone - or _anything_ had been stalking across them.

It briefly occurred to her that dementors didn't step on the ground at all. They glided across it. Maybe that sudden forboding hadn't been the approaching full moon at all. Maybe it has been a dementor. That would explain her sudden feeling of dread and fear.

"What would a dementor be doing _here?"_ she asked herself irritably. There wasn't a good answer to that. She'd had plenty of bouts or anxiety and fear without a dementor to trigger them, and anyway, the island wasn't dreary or gloomy; it hadn't rained in days, and then it had just been a sunshower.

She was just being silly.

When Jane emerged from the staircase onto the first floor, she found it unsufferably stuffy. She'd generally been keeping a window or two open every night to keep it cool, and now she wished she'd shrugged off her misplaced anxiety the night before and left at least one cracked overnight. That wish intensified when she waved her wand to open all of the windows at once and nothing happened.

She'd forgotten how paranoid she'd been the previous night. She had to go to each individual window to tap it with her wand and unlock it, which took long enough that she was thoroughly annoyed by the time she was finished. Once she'd finished that and unlocked the door, she was finally able to wave her wand. All of the windows flew open, and a refreshing breeze quickly filled the cottage.

She grabbed a book off the table and collapsed onto the long windowseat lining the far wall. She wouldn't let her nerves get the best of her like that again. Of _that,_ she was certain.

She was laying in the hammock when the sun set that evening. Despite her resolution, the twilight made her stomach twist uncomfortably again. Before the sky could truly darken, she hurried inside and slammed the door behind her with more force than was really warranted. She didn't venture outside once after that, and she locked the door and the windows after she ate dinner - though only the normal way, not the paranoid magical way - and she took her wand upstairs when she went to bed.

The next evening, she forced herself to stay outside until the stars were shining in the sky. The black surrounding her was unsettling in a way she'd never found it to be before, but the longer she stayed out there with nothing of note happening, the more her anxiety eased away.

Even if her palms were still clammy.

Even if she still felt like there was someone watching her.

Even if the occasional thud of an apple falling on the ground no longer felt as benign as it once had.

She went a step further and lay on the dying grass and crumbling orange leaves the next day to watch the sun set. For the first time in days, she was quite sure that she was alone; the scenery around her was silent other than the slight breeze rippling over the leaves, and she could still see well enough to see the small shapes in the darkness as apples fell from the tree.

This was the holiday Jane had been looking for.

It was only after the sun had disappeared below the horizon that she felt a sudden sharp pain in her stomach. The searing pain kept her stationary for a minute or two, and then it lessened; she clapped her hands to the offending area, where the pain had turned to a dull, steady ache, and rolled on her stomach just in time to retch.

The force made the pain in her stomach spike so quickly her vision clouded momentarily; she retched again as she fought to maintain consciousness, and the violence of it made her lower ribs ache. The ache didn't go away once she'd stopped retching; she'd probably fractured a couple.

She couldn't concentrate on that, though. As she tried to crawl toward the house, her entire mind focused on getting onto the deck and off the grass, she felt pins and needles erupt across the surface her entire body.

She let out a loud moan. Her eyes were beginning to swim with tears, making it nearly impossible to see what was in front of her; her questioning hand smacked against the step hard, and she groaned again.

Still, she put one hand on the railing, the other hand on the bottom step, and hauled her plump body onto it. She wasn't sure how long it took before she was finally able to collapse onto the deck, so exhausted she could hardly move, and she almost let her eyes close - just for a second - when she heard a creak.

Her head snapped up, exhaustion or not. There was a shape standing in front of her, though she couldn't make out any distinguishing characteristics; the orb light was glowing most brightly than she'd ever seen it glow before, and it made her eyes, not yet fully dry, tear up again.

A shiver ran down her spine, and she opened her mouth. Only a growl emerged; her mouth had finally finished turning into a muzzle. She could only see the outline of a figure in the darkness.

She flexed her claws. If she could just be fast enough -

"Well, well, well." The voice was cold and high. She saw the figure start to raise their wand, and she lunged forward.

She wasn't fast enough, and the spell hit her squarely in the chest.

* * *

 _A/N: New story! I promise I'm going to finish some of current WIPs soon, but this has been rattling around for awhile, so I want to start posting it. 3 Reviews are hugely appreciated._

 _Branwen_


	2. The Beginnings of the Case

Johanna Greengrass hadn't expected to take to teaching when she'd first been told in no uncertain terms that _all_ Aurors had to contribute to training new recruits, no exceptions. To her surprise, it hadn't turned out to be that bad. She even actively liked this batch of trainees.

"Good job today," she told the straggler at the end of the day. "You'll get occlumency eventually."

The frustration had faded enough that his face was no longer warring with his hair for which was redder, but he was clearly still a little demoralized. "I thought I _did_ have it." He sighed. "I guess better you flipping through my memories than anyone else they've had test me, though. You don't get annoyed at me for not telling you that I stole your firewhiskey in my seventh year or didn't tell you I liked you before you left Hogwarts."

Both were actual experiences he'd had in his training before Johanna had been told to work with the current batch of Auror trainees. She'd had some trouble learning legilimency at first, but she'd always been good with mind magic in general, and as she'd pointed out to her boss, it did make much more sense to have someone who wasn't quite as emotionally invested in the young man trying to use legilimency on him than family members or his girlfriend, who was now a third-year trainee to his second.

"Nope. That's why I told your dad that I should be the one teaching you." She reached out to nudge him. "Succeeded, too, didn't I?"

Albus Potter grinned despite himself. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Maybe you'll have an easier time of it if you shave off your beard. I've heard those things can be very distracting."

"I _like_ my beard."

Johanna boosted herself up to sit on the table they'd been practicing occlumency over that afternoon. "Yeah, well. No accounting for taste. You heading over to my cousin's place?"

"Yeah. We're going out drinking with James once he gets back from scouting out the acromantula nest that's sprung up near Godric's Hollow."

"Of course you are." Johanna still wasn't quite sure how her cousin Scorpius and James Potter had gone from barely tolerating each other when the older boy had left Hogwarts to being genuinely good friends now, but there it was. "Have fun."

Albus grinned and waved a hand as he headed out the door. Johanna headed back to her cubicle and was about to grab her jacket and do the same when she noticed a note laying on her desk. She skimmed it, sighed, and tossed her belongings back onto the chair before heading across the room to her boss's office. "You wanted to see me?"

Her boss looked up from his desk. He was standing rather than sitting; at some point before Johanna had joined the department, he'd given up on the idea of sitting at a desk when he was trying to work, saying that he thought better when he was standing or moving around. His dark hair was even more unruly than usual - he was badly in need of a haircut - and his beard had grown out significantly in the weeks since he'd decided to eschew shaving again. He His green eyes, however, were alert, and his wand was never far from his hand.

Johanna suspected that his near-compulsive awareness of where his wand was at all times was a byproduct of his rather tumultuous adolescence rather than of his career path.

"I did." He jerked his head toward the chair closest to her and picked up his wand to lower the desk back onto the floor. Once it had settled, he grabbed his own oft-neglected chair from the corner and pulled it toward him. "How is Albus doing with occlumency?"

"He'll get it."

Harry Potter sighed. "I thought he _did_ have it."

Johanna repressed a smile at that; though he wouldn't necessarily thank her for pointing it out, Harry and his son were very alike in a lot of ways. "He mostly did. He's just got to get back in practice." Her boss looked like he was going to belabor the point, so she added quickly, "Is that all?"

"No." He glanced over her shoulder. "Shut the door, please."

Her curiosity was piqued. She leaned back until her fingertips brushed against the edge of the door. She readjusted her grip and pushed it closed. The resulting sound was a bit louder than she'd intended, and she winced "Sorry."

Harry pointed his wand at the door and muttered, _"Muffliato."_ He pulled a piece of parchment out from beneath a map and handed it over to her. When she looked down at it, she recognized it immediately as a missing persons report. "That was filed by the Department of Magical Transportation two weeks ago. One of their employees never returned from her holiday. When they investigated the house she'd been renting, they found no obvious signs of foul play, but she remains missing."

Johanna frowned as she skimmed the report. "Anything notable about her? Family history? Access to classified information?"

He shook his head. "Not that I can tell. She's been in and out of St. Mungo's more than you'd expect for a desk job - she's out in the field very occasionally, but mostly she just approves use of the floo network and portkeys - but even that isn't really out of the ordinary."

"Muggleborn?" Pureblood supremacy hadn't died with Voldemort, and though it had been significantly reduced for years, there had been a slight upswing in anti-Muggle activities over the last year or so.

"No. Half-blood, and she's not particularly involved in the Muggle or Muggleborn rights movement. She's donated a bit of money to them and to a couple clinical trials at St. Mungo's over the years, but nothing noteworthy. She's a bit of a loner."

"Huh. What does Transportation say about her?"

"She's conscientious, always does her work, and rarely uses her sick days. She works from home sometimes, but there doesn't seem to be any concern about the quality of her work."

Johanna put the piece of paper down. "Is there a reason this is getting tossed to us rather than normal law enforcement?"

He hesitated. "I took it," he admitted at last. "It _looks_ like it's pretty straightforward, but one of my contacts saw it and passed it over to me first. He had a bad feeling about it, but he couldn't really articulate why. I had the same reaction, so I kept it."

From his halting delivery of that particular piece of information, Johanna had a strong suspicion that she knew exactly who'd passed it off to him, but if he wasn't explicitly saying who it was, she would take her cue from him. "Can _you_ articulate it?"

He put an arm behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. "No. But he's right - something feels _wrong_ about it. I want you to look into it."

She nodded. "Is that all?"

"Yes." He was still clearly lost in thought. "That's all. Have a good weekend."

Johanna usually spent Friday nights with her group of similarly-minded friends; none of them were Aurors, but to a witch or wizard, they worked in equally hazardous and action-packed professions. Tonight, however, things were quieter than usual, particularly since Victoire and Van Dedworth, who both worked to control the dangerous magical creature population of the country, were out dealing with a dementor crisis in Wales. She would have liked to see Teddy, who'd been one of her closest friends since they'd been at Hogwarts, but it had been a very long week, and as pathetic as it felt to want to go to bed before 9:30 on a Friday night, there it was.

That was really how you knew you'd exited your young, carefree, and irresponsible adult years. You went to sleep early on a Friday night.

Johanna never had trouble falling asleep. She did, however, have a hard time _staying_ asleep - if she only woke up twice, it was a good night. It was one of many ways in which she was her father's daughter, which her mother had never quite forgiven her for. Tonight was even worse than most nights, and that was saying something - she slept fitfully, jerked awake at the smallest noise, and had vague memories of a dream in which she had no magic and a pet tiger when she finally roused herself for good just after dawn.

She felt more tired than ever as she stared up at the ceiling, watching the light seep in through her thick green curtains. She'd written her exhaustion off to a long week, but now she was having to revisit that assessment. She knew what a night of this kind of sleep generally meant, and it was no wonder she was so tense and anxious.

A night of sleep like this didn't mean that she was distracted by the week's events.

It meant that she was about to have a vision.

* * *

 _A/N: Hi, guys! The story is really getting off its feet now, and I'd love to know what you think of it - particularly any guesses about who mentioned the case to Harry or what vision Johanna might be about to have. ;) Regardless, thank you so much for reading!_

 _Huge thanks to Black Mirror for leaving my first review on this story._

 _Branwen_


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